Ryan McBride/Staff photographer
Students at Spaulding High School Tuesday morning react to a video during an assembly put on by the Highway Safety Team and Rochester School District speaking about texting and driving.

ROCHESTER — Spaulding High School students and staff drove the point home Tuesday morning — even a short, insignificant text message, sent by a distracted driver, can result in the loss of life.

Inside the school auditorium, hundreds of students sat quietly and listened to student speakers as images of wrecked cars flashed on a projector screen. Senior Kishan Patel stood before a photo of his own crashed car, which his younger brother, Rabi, a sophomore, was involved in as a passenger.

“I want you folks to learn from my mistakes,” Kishan Patel said. “… Always remember that there's a lot of people who care about you and it would hurt greatly if something ever happened to you.”

Following the presentation, the brothers explained the accident made them both more involved in highway safety awareness efforts. They, along with several other Spaulding students, comprise the school's Highway Safety Team, which worked to orchestrate Tuesday's event.

“This one little choice changes everything,” Patel continued, telling the crowd by the time a driver spends 5 seconds sending a text, at 60 mph per hour, their vehicle has already traveled 300 feet.

The Highway Safety Team meets several times a month to discuss students' needs when it comes to safe driving, and organized a pledge earlier this year where students signed posters promising not to text and drive.

Tuesday's assembly featured “The Last Text” film, created by AT&T, as well as a keynote speech by a victim of a severe distracted driving crash years ago. The short documentary featured family and friends who lost someone due to texting while driving. The messages that eventually led to the downfall of now deceased teenagers included “LOL,” “where u at” and a hauntingly incomplete message that simply read “where r …”

Bryan Dalrymple, a 33-year-old man still recovering from his accident 15 years ago in New York, approached the somber room, begging students to be safe this holiday season, just days before they left for Thanksgiving break. Dalrymple said he was in the front passenger seat when his friend driving after having a few drinks struck an illegally parked 18-wheeler, which hit him in the face upon collision. He lost sight in his eye and fractured his skull.

“Life was not good anymore. I was young and this wasn't the way it was supposed to be. Was this my life? This couldn't be happening to me,” Dalrymple recalled, noting he and his friends were talking inside the car and changing the radio station when the crash occurred, the night before their graduation.

His mother, Kathy, said she and her family accrued approximately $500,000 in medical bills getting Bryan back to a seminormal life. After years of physical and occupational therapy, Bryan now has a part-time job and speaks with little difficulty, though as he paused in some parts of his remarks, he pointed out his speech is not what it used to be.

Assistant Principal Ryan Kaplan said the Spaulding High community is grateful they have not lost a student in recent years in a motor vehicle accident, even though crashes are the leading cause in teenage deaths. Before a presentation by Bryan, Kaplan said he was the same age as the man, and he wondered what his life would be like if he ended up in a similarly devastating car accident.

“Bryan is a hero in that he is sharing his story so that all of us can make better decisions,” Kaplan told the crowd.

The assembly also touched on the death of Chelsea Fuller, a 17-year-old high school student from Brentwood who died in a horrific crash in Newburyport, Mass., in September 2010. Her family photo was displayed with Chelsea in the center, as Kathy Dalrymple held an egg in her hand to demonstrate how fragile a person's head and brain can be. When shaken, it scrambles, she said. She became emotional as she described the night of Bryan's accident, just before she waited for a terrifying 14 hours as her son underwent brain surgery.

“I was hysterical. I was frantic. He was graduating the next day. This was a happy time in our lives. My world turned upside down,” she said. “A mother's worst nightmare … I spoke briefly to the neurosurgeon before the surgery. She prepared me for the worst. 'It doesn't look good,' she said. 'His head injuries are very severe.'”

Kathy Dalrymple said today though, she is honored to travel the country with her son and share their story and maybe save a life.

Following the event, Rabi Patel said he was proud of the assembly. The Highway Safety Team recently presented its work to keep fellow high-schoolers safe at a statewide conference in Meredith last April. Team member Kiana Brigham said she and her group helped survey students by tracking who was wearing a seat belt when leaving the school parking lot recently too, as part of another safety project.

Senior Rebecca Moore said she and her peers are incredibly passionate about the topic at hand.

“I don't think any of us expected to get so into it,” she said.

The assembly was grant funded by the Allstate Foundation, the NH Pediatric Society, and Williams' Driving School along with Howard Hedegard of the Dartmouth Injury Prevention Center and Steve Gratton.

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Ryan McBride/Staff photographer Kishan Patel speaks to fellow students at Spaulding High School during an assembly put on by the Highway Safety Team and the Rochester School District Tuesday morning.

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Ryan McBride/Staff photographer Bryan Dalrymple, now 33-years-old, was the keynote speaker at Spaulding High School about the dangers of texting and driving. He recovered from a serious accident that took 11 surgeries and almost four years of recovery from an open traumatic brain injury and other serious injuries the day before his high school graduation in 1997.

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Ryan McBride/Staff photographer Students watch as a video is presented to them from the Highway Safety Team of Spaulding High School and the Rochester School District Tuesday morning about the issues of texting and driving.